My thoughts, and opinions on many subjects. But it's always a mad world.

Updating Tuesdays, and Saturdays, with a video blog the last Thursday of each month (Most of the time anyway). On Sunday I roll over, and go back to sleep.

So Who is Amanda Harper?

Well to start with I'm obviously a writer, though of everything from very alternative romances to crime dramas.

I'm a lesbian, trans-woman in her 30's, who is very much into her royal blue hair (now purple), velvet and leather filled wardrobe and of course my oversized shit kicking goth boots. Oh, and I'm a hardcore PC, and tabletop gamer.

In this blog I want to hit on subjects that I don't have another medium for. Expect reviews of games old and new, though mostly old. Expect rants about the world in general. Expect the occasional lapse into convoluted personal philosophy. Oh and definitely expect some stuff on BDSM, after all I was a professional dominatrix for a few years and enjoy the BDSM lifestyle in my private life now.

So I hope you enjoy the randomness of my ruminations, and let the madness commence.

(Please feel absolutely welcome to comment on any and all of my posts. I have only three rules...
1: avoid Godwins rule.
2: avoid bad language.
3: I'm not here to provide free advertising to commercial websites, comment if you wish but I will edit out links post to such sites.
Other than that enjoy yourself, and please feel free to have a pretty signature.)

A eulogy to my soon to be departed Asus EEEpc 701.

I have chosen on this day to speak, fondly of my soon to be departed EEEpc 701 netbook. You see this venerable example of its breed is not long for this world. The poor dear has in the last few days developed several symptoms which point to a not very sudden demise. In fact it was only on the evening of Saturday the 4th that my poor beloved netbook developed what can only be described as a nasty death rattle. So with its consignment to computer Valhalla assured in the near future, the time has come to pay my respects to this, the greatest of my electronic game-day players.

I still remember the day that my netbook arrived in the post. It had taken me 12 weeks to save and another weeks wait after ordering for that moment. But it had been so worth the wait. In it’s surprisingly small white box waited the best piece of bad technology I have ever owned. Which is saying something when you consider I once owned an Atari 5200. I very carefully opened the box and inside, resplendent in hot pink and white lay my EEEpc 701. Without even switching it on, I fell totally in love with its miniscule size and equally tiny weight.

Less than ten minutes later that netbook won first blood, when a sharp piece of soldering inside it cut into my knuckle as I fitted the second stick of ram. That was when I knew our future held many battles of willpower, where the most stubborn would be the victor. How right I was.

You see this was back in the day when netbooks only came loaded with Linux. The operating system I loathe most of all, even more than Apple OS or Windows, Linux represents everything I hate about computing. It’s clunky, badly realised and so completely user-unfriendly as to be almost unusable for the uninitiated. Needless to say at that point in time I was most definitely one of the uninitiated. That said in time and through sheer pig-headedness I grew to be proficient with Linux, though I will never like it. But even so, to this day my sickly netbook and I have toe-to-toe battles, caused purely by that most hellish of mankind’s creations Linux.

Yet despite these ups and downs, my netbook and I grew to have an extraordinarily productive relationship. To date, between blogs, articles, four drafts of one whole novel, one-quarter of its sequel and miscellaneous other pieces of writing, together we have churned out a minimum of a half million words. That of course is without counting emails and the innumerable posts on Facebook.

On its tiny seven-inch screen I have watched dozens of episodes of the Angry Video Game Nerd, trawled the mucky streets of 4chan and spoken for hours with friends on Skype.

Yes my netbook has been my link to the outside world when my health has prevented me from leaving home for days and occasionally weeks on end. It has been my release from boredom in Airport lounges and even my MP3 player when my real MP3 player has simply given up and died, mid train journey.

All this for just over €200 almost five years ago, five years of heavy use.

Unfortunately though, my netbooks solid state hard drive has started to fail, the screen flickers, the voice from its speakers is roughened with age and the “m” and “k” keys only work when they feel like it. It’s almost time for my netbook to be brought out behind the wood shed, so I can put a deer-slug through its processor, releasing it from its current state of misery.

But today friends I take this opportunity to say a fond and loving farewell to my fellow adventurer in my forays into literature, while it is still alive and striving still to kick my ass, with its hateful operating system. My netbook I raise a glass to you, you have been a worthy companion and occasionally worthy enemy. I will miss you now that I am forced to replace you in the coming weeks. But for the time being I will still love using you, even if you are occasionally spitting up digital pus and blood while you sit on my lap.

2 Comments to “A eulogy to my soon to be departed Asus EEEpc 701.”

I am about to bid a fond farewell to my EeePC too – the damned keyboard is too sticky and as a writer I can declare it against tax. It survived two round the world jaunts (including two months in Central America) and countless internal trip in Australia. It will be missed.

The weird thing about me and technology is that, I continue to miss devices long after they’ve been consigned to the huge collection of semi functionality at the back of my wardrobe. I mean I still miss my first PC that had a huge processing capacity of 455mhz, it had 64bm’s of ram and a huge 5 gig hard drive. (can you sense the sarcasm?)

But I played some great games on it, learned to touch type on it, learned how to use a wordprocessor properly, CAD, free porn and of course Unreal. It holds good memories. The same with my original Ipaq, (which is still running, in Latvia), hell I still have a working Compaq Aero in one of my drawers.

That said I do get you Sadhbh on the whole excitement thing. I can’t wait to get a new lappy, hook it up to my network and spend a weekend getting everything set up the way I like it. *bounces in place* Though it’s gonna be about two months to save for both my partners and my own one…dang money’s.